About Farm Boys
by Athena Phoenix 144
Summary: Lois Lane Kent ponders her troubled marriage. Part of a series of vignettes that began with In His Heart.


Thanks to Djinn for the beta.

**About Farm Boys**

by Athena Phoenix

_I'm losing him._

Lois blinked, her eyes suddenly burning.

She had been typing the same sentence, she now realized, over and over for the past ten minutes. "There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon, but knowledgeable sources in Star Labs, a major contractor…"

Ten minutes. The same damn sentence.

_I'm losing him._

She shut her eyes, wiped them with her sleeve.

_I'm losing my Boy Scout. _A bitter, cynical smile creased the right side of her mouth.

_Maybe you deserve to lose him, _came that horrible voice in her head, the one that had told her she and Clark would never work, _could _never work, that he was too cornball, too small-town, too goody-goody…

…_too good for me._

It hadn't happened overnight, she realized. They had been drifting apart for a while. At first, she had – _surprise! – _blamed him.The whole Justice Lords thing had made it easy to categorize him, file him away. _Dangerous. Power hungry. High-handed. _

Bull. It was as if… as if she couldn't switch off her reporter mode. Couldn't just talk to him, enjoy his company…

…_enjoy a damn picnic._

She had wondered, later, how on earth she could have become so jaded that being flown to the top of a bridge towercould have become an occasion for ridicule. _Where the hell should he have taken me? Where _could _he have taken me that I wouldn't have thrown it in his face? A restaurant? Like I wouldn't have made a crack about his being staid. The movies? "Wow. The _movies_. I never would have thought of that, Smallville." _

_It's a habit_. _A habit I've gotten into_. _It's not _what_ he does; it's _anything_ he does._

Her eyes dropped to the floor, idly taking in the crumpled pieces of papers – receipts, memos. Kleenex.

Her face flushed as she remembered her whispered bravado on their wedding day – "Now you're _mine, _Smallville." He had smiled, his eyes flashing mischievously, his frame shuddering slightly as he had – no doubt – visualized all manner of games involving that little phrase, whispered in the dark…

And yet... Lois knew, just knew, that she had been less than stellar that first night. She had _assumed _that _of course _she was his first, and that _of course _he would be enraptured –no, _overwhelmed _by her womanhood, her wiles, her… "sophistication."

But for some reason – maybe because it had finally registered in her tough noggin that she was _marrying Superman_ – it was she who had been tentative, shy. Had Clark been courting a sweet, demure woman, the archetypal _farm girl _who was the butt of so many of Lois's smug comments about "the simple life", such a performance might have been endearing. But coming from a woman whose entire seduction strategy had been based on amused condescension, it had been incongruous. She thought she could read his mind: _Oh, is _that _why you acted all this time like _you_ were doing _me_ a favor?_

He had made light of it, chuckled about her "getting the part". But there had been disappointment in his eyes – made all the sadder because she knew he wouldn't have cared how good a technical lover she was, had she made the whole thing less of a contest to begin with. And – it made her sick to think – maybe he'd had better? The way Diana looked at him sometimes, when she didn't realize Lois was watching… Lois was sure it was just her imagination. _Most of the time, anyway._

_An impossibly tall goddess, with a voice that makes _me _think of sex, wrapped in a glorified flag swimsuit, and… me. Some contrast. _

_I wonder if he still loves me_.

"_Mr. Kent, knowledgeable sources in the subconscious state that you have decided that Lois Lane Kent is just too much of a pain in the ass to put up with. That you consider her 'selfish, self-absorbed, self-righteous, self-involved, self-flagellating, etc.' Would you care to comment on these allegations, or are you too busy ogling Diana of Themyscira to care?" _

_What would he say?_

_Would it be stupid just to… ask?_

She looked again at the screen, hit the Save button compulsively one more time, then made her decision.

The League communicator connected her instantly.

"L- um, Ms. Lane? Is something wrong?"

"Hello… Superman. Are you busy?"

She could sense him frowning in confusion. "N-no, not really. It's just, you know, monitor duty. Batman is off in the lab checking on… something, God knows what. Pretty boring, except Flash is teaching Diana how to play "God of War". She's really getting into it – didn't know Ancient Greek had so many bad words in it – at least that's what I think those words are. I hope she doesn't lose, for the sake of Wally's Playstation… _Diana, for God's sake, it's just a game, all right?" _He was laughing, but cut himself short when he picked up Lois's sob, too low for a human ear to hear.

"It's okay." Lois's voice was brittle. "I can call you back."

"Lois. Wha—"

She closed the communicator, cutting his voice off mid-word.

Seconds later, a low buzzing sound, a pop , and Superman materialized in a beam of light.

"Lois?" His voice sank to a whisper when he saw her, sitting at her desk, her hands covering her face. A flash of red, and she felt his hand touching her hair, slowly stroking it, parting her balled-up hands.

She looked up at him, blurrily, through tears, but was unable to speak.

He kissed a tear away from the corner of her eye, and a sad smile suddenly appeared on his face. "Yeah, we really ought to talk," he said, answering her unasked question.

**The End (?)**


End file.
